Now that Mothball 1 is stripped down for the season I’m starting to think about improvements and mods for 2012. Some of the modifications I’ve already started. Let’s start with foils. After checking out the information on Bruce McLeod’s blog (http://www.teknologika.com/mothblog/the-evolution-of-moth-main-hydrofoils/) I concluded that my main foil was too big. It was about 10% larger than the Bladerider main foil. Enter Mr. Dremel. After inspecting the foil and comparing it to all of the other foils out there I decided that my flap was too large, in particular at the tips. I couldn’t take too much off the flap, but I did taper it down 10mm at the tips. This should bring the flap into better proportion with the cross-section of the rest of the foil and reduce drag. Tapering the flap reduced the total area by 5%. I’m considering cutting the tips down a bit to reduce the area even more, but I may wait a bit for that. Does anyone know the approximate area of the M2 foils?
I’ve also decided that I want a ride-height adjuster. I can get good height, but it seems like I always have more height sailing downwind. If I set the height for downwind then I’m a bit low upwind, and if I set it good for upwind then downwind is horrifying. Is this normal? I saw the ride height adjuster on Sailingbits.com (http://www.sailingbits.com/catalog/moth-ride-height--gearing-adjuster-p-377.html). Does anyone know if this adjuster will fit onto Bladerider components? Seems like buying one of these would be way easier than developing my own system.
These are my only two big planned changes. I want to refinish the hull and make some other minor repairs, but these are relatively easy. My hope for 2012 is to get things sorted and then make it to some Moth events on the west coast.
